Flight Feather
by iphis15
Summary: Complete multichap. M for Language, Insinuation, homoerotism and some heteroerotism. Valkyrie/Clarabelle, AU.
1. Entry One

**Entry One: This Was Not My Fault.**

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><p>To be perfectly honest, it wasn't. My fault, I mean. You were asking for it.<p>

You were all asking for it. All you perfect, flawless, fucked-up fools.

You say I've gone crazy? I'm sorry, love, but I'm not going to swallow that kind of shit. At least have the decency to make up better lies than that. Insane I may be, but I am definitely not stupid.

No, I am not stupid at all.

So go on, you bloodsucking little parasites. Get out your leeches and your needles and your soul-stealing drugs. I'm not scared. Not any more. Look me in the eyes, and you'll see that, as blind as you are.

Why is that, I hear you asking? I'm not who you think I am – not any longer. I've changed. I'm not just innocent, hazy, dazy little Clarabelle any more. I'm not really sure who I am, actually, but I'm definitely not she.

You know what? That sure as Hell wasn't my fault, either, because this rapist logic isn't mine, these are not the thoughts that should have been born of my brain, and you have always been putting words into my mouth.

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><p><strong>AN: This story was inspired by the Angelspit song _100%_. It's a really fun song.**

**~Mademise Morte, September 11, 2011.**


	2. Entry Two

**Entry Two: This Was Also Probably Not Your Fault.**

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><p>It's okay, Valkyrie. I think I can forgive you for putting me into this place. I'm not sure what to call it, but if it wants to be amorphous, of a diaphanous, doubtful existence, then that's fine. That's all I really want for myself, after all.<p>

Maybe, though, I can't forgive you for erasing me, for making me into this emptiness, this hole in the fabric of the universe. I'm a dying faerie, Valkyrie. When I go, so do all of the dreams that I was so very instrumental in creating.

How was it that you could blindly follow me when I said I understood, when I said I'd been through it all before, when I actually trusted you, only to drop me in a moment when I said I liked you more than even that? Is it that creepy, being willing to kill for someone you love?

Maybe it is, but you would do it. I can see it in your eyes, as clouded as they are with worry and with lies.

The funny thing, Valkyrie? Do you know the truly amusing, amazing thing? You'll never be able to forget me, because you're one of the dreams that will die with me. I've stolen you as much as you stole me – you'll never be able to look at our fucked-up world in the same way again, and you'll never be able to look at our time together without wondering what could have been.

Even with all that, I think that I don't hold you completely responsible for this. How could one mere person be the cause of so much suffering? It's impossible. It's not all your fault.

That does not mean I'll forgive you, but that much I will acknowledge.

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><p><strong>AN: This story exists in an AU-state. Having said that, all faeries as mentioned are purely for metaphoric decoration.**

**~Mademise Morte, September 11, 2011.**


	3. Entry Three

**Entry Three: These People Are Definitely At Fault For **_**Something.**_

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><p>You stand before me, clutching your pretty little rosary tightly in your hand, and you look at me with your wide, wide eyes, and you dare to be afraid of me. You dare to be afraid of the soul you destroyed so completely and utterly that it has no chance of ever returning to any semblance of being intact in the way it was before you came along.<p>

You dare to fear me, even when I'm like this, wrapped up useless, wrapped up tight, separated from you by a barrier of impenetrable glass. Can you see me, or do you only see the straitjacket, the blood staining through layers of bandage, the word lunatic that's been branded over me as invisibly and surely as a witchmark?

You were never that religious before me, Valkyrie, and you sure as Hell weren't when you were with me. I find that an amusement, somehow, as I watch your fingers twitch and convulse over the beads. I'm not sure why that image is so very perfect, though, because coherence is dancing away from me. I'm starving, and unless the sadistic nurses troop in with their intravenous drips and their sugar-water soon, I'm going to pass out. Not like it'll make much of a difference. I'm barely awake as it is.

The sound has long drained away from me in this silence, and my eyes are blurring into vagueness and you look like an angel in the light, poised and posed on the edge of heaven's boundaries, ready and waiting for your fall.

Here they are, the empty people with the white coats. Their surgical masks and the immaculacy of their clothing makes them look like the Faceless Ones themselves, empty and horrible and ready to hurt. There's a hint of sympathy in your eyes as they remove the gag from my mouth, ask me how I am. I must look too weak to pose any real threat.

I don't need your sympathy. Give me your fear, Valkyrie, give me your anger and your suffering, because I am in no position at all to deal with your pity. Not now, not ever.

I bite at the white-clothed arm nearest to me, and the gag is back on, and there's the familiar needle, and it's going into me—_Faceless Ones_—and the world goes sedative-blurry.

Yay.

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><p><strong>AN: I really enjoy this voice of Clarabelle's.**

**~Mademise Morte, September 11, 2011.**


	4. Entry Four

**Entry Four: This Guy Might Not Be Directly Responsible For My Problems, Though I Seriously Doubt It.**

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><p>When I am more awake than usual, I struggle my eyelids open, pulling at the heavy hooks of sleep that have sunk into my flesh, and am confronted by a blotch in the purity of surgical white and dried-blood-brown. This takes the form of a leering young man, colored in pasty pinks and strawlike golds and a sheen like plastic that settles over his surface.<p>

He greets me passionlessly, his voice a monotone, and I get the vague sense that I should know who he is, that I should recognize his name beyond a twinge of a memory that could well just be a muscular spasm.

"And you can just fuck off, too," I say, in answer to his _I trust you are well_, only I can't, because they've left the gag in my mouth, keeping me stretched open and dry.

"I'm sorry, what was that?" There is definitely emotion to him now, though it is not a good emotion on him, though it is a little better than emotionless was. It's some kind of amusement, something sick and twisted and destructive, and it shines out in his face and his voice and the jerky-twitching-excitement that quivers through his hands and limbs.

I don't like seeing him like this. Whole. It's easier to deconstruct him mentally, to tear him into little pieces of bone and gore in the arena that is my mind, the only free space left to me. I would consume his brain, and that would be the greatest contribution to society it ever made, in feeding me.

Maybe I'd get my magic back if I did that. Do you think I would? Do you think that that would return the thing they stole from me? Maybe it would. It wouldn't even go halfway to making up for all the things I've lost because of them – my virginity, for example, and any remnants of sanity I might have cherished – but it might be a start.

Shit, is he here to rape me?

… Wait, who the fuck is he again?

He must have seen the look of confusion on my face, for he is saying, with a faint smirk, that my name is Clarabelle, I am clinically deranged, and that is why I am in the Sanctuary for Lunatics. He is the doctor in charge of my case, and fuck I'm hot so he's just going to slip the bandages apart and help himself.

He accompanies his words with actions and I do not doubt for a minute that he is the one that should be locked up here, but this world has never had any sense of justice, so I merely try to stop myself from breathing. I am aware of the fact that I'll faint before I can actually die from suffocation, but it's better than nothing.

I've changed my mind, Valkyrie. I am definitely blaming you for this.

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><p><strong>AN: I suppose Fletcher exists here after all.**

**~Mademise Morte, September 11, 2011.**


	5. Entry Five

**Entry Five: So Like Apparently I'm Not The Only One The World Has Fucked Over.**

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><p>They brought a new inmate into the Asylum today. I saw them dragging her along, from my happy quiet little perch where I sat with my mouth being drained of all moisture by the fabric of the gag and my arms losing all proprioception from being strapped so tight and useless against my chest and my mind withering into a thin kind of nothingness. My eyes were sort of open, mostly shut, and it's only the fact that I can hear her sobs still that keeps me from thinking I must have imagined her. You get around to imagining a lot of things, when you have the kind of empty time we do around here.<p>

She has amazing hair. It's beautiful, so full of colors and shape, little spikes and swirls, shades, shadows and tones. It's short, of course, like mine is, because apparently you can strangle yourself with long hair, same if your hands can't move, but I guess it was still lovely. I can't even see mine now, haven't in weeks, and if I could, it would probably be all dull and filthy and ugly.

She's not gagged, because she doesn't scream or bite or anything like that. She's probably a pretty good girl. I don't know. She can't be all that perfect, since she's in this place, but I'd like to think that she's Good in some way because then I can't be all that Bad.

The thing that just kills me, when I close my brain and let myself think, is that I'll probably never know her name, never know her reasons for being here, never know what kind of magic she had or the brand of hair dye she used or the genres of music she listened to. I'll never know the books she fell in love with. I'll never hear about her likes and her hates and her hopes and her dreams, because I'm going to spend the rest of an eternal life in this Godsdamned hellhole.

She's still crying, and each soft, sad sound hurts me in a way that you never could have, Valkyrie, and yet I don't think I could ever hate her in quite the way I hate you. Isn't that amazing? Isn't that a surprise? If you could hear this, would you be envious of her, or would you just pity her, in the same way that you pity me? Distantly, without emotion?

I wonder if she had someone like you, in that grand, giant horrible world that we once called our home, that you probably still inhabit. Someone she loved, someone she trusted, someone who made life worth living despite everything. Someone who betrayed her, in the end, because that's how the universe goes.

She probably didn't. She doesn't have eyes like that. She looks like someone who was screwed over through no fault of her own, someone who would have ended up in this place no matter what she did, how much she struggled. She looks like someone who would have given up long before the point of betrayal. She looks sensible, like my opposite.

You see how far you've driven me, Valkyrie? I'm trying to psychoanalyze someone with whom I'll probably never speak, someone who I don't know from Eve, because it's so much better than thinking of you, or thinking of myself. That's how much hurt you've caused me, Valkyrie darling dearest, how deeply you've twisted the knife into my heart.

Are you regretting it yet? No, of course not.

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><p><strong>AN: The tenses here were fun to work with.**

**~Mademise Morte, September 12, 2011.**


	6. Entry Six

**Entry Six: Definitely _His_ Fault.**

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><p>You're back again, and I am still gagged, still bleeding, still tied up and about as useless as a piece of meat. Which actually makes sense, doesn't it? Doesn't that crazy, fucked up cult you call a religion preach that people like me are integrally soulless? Well, if I've got no soul, then I'm just bones and skin and beating heart and an empty, empty smile.<p>

Thank the Gods you're not still clutching your rosary like a protective charm. Thank the Gods there's really no more sympathy in your eyes. Thank Them for the fact that you're looking at me like I'm not here, the fact that you're looking through me into the white room that is as blank and sterile as my soul. That's what you're thinking, isn't it? Isn't it?

I wonder what it'll be like next time. Will I still be gagged and bound, or will I be freed? Will there be a next time? Or will you just… Stop visiting? I wouldn't blame you if you did. I mean, I still don't know what you're trying to prove with all your visitations. I mean, to whom?

Your boyfriend the doctor joins you outside the panel of glass, and he's slinging his arm around your shoulders, and he's smiling an inane smile and talking to you lightly and cheerfully. Did you know that he's not faithful to you, Valkyrie? Did you know that he makes a habit of fucking all the inmates on a regular basis? He says it puts the fear of God in us. I think it just convinces us that he's the one who should be under sedatives.

Oh, here it is. Your hands dart into one coat pocket, and out it comes, and there's the flash of silver. The cross presses into your skin as you finger it, and the other beads hang loosely. You're murmuring now, and I can't even tell if you're talking to him or praying. I guess maybe I'm beyond caring. Isn't that amazing? I don't care anymore. I don't feel. I'm not angry, I'm not happy, I'm not even convincingly apathetic. I'm just empty. I'm soulless.

I don't even need my daily dose of poison to fall asleep, to terminate my unfeeling part of this social ritual. I just slip off into slumber, and I swear that I can hear you muttering your prayers like mantras, like the things that you say over and over in the night, just desperately hoping that you'll come to believe in them, or at least they'll cease to hold meaning, so that you can pretend that you do. I can also hear the girl in the cell next to mine. She doesn't cry anymore. She's usually pretty quiet, but I swear I can hear her breath. I sure as Hell can't hear mine.

When was the last time that I was actually alive? When was the last time my heart beat, my voice laughed, my limbs danced? When was the last time I hated, I loved, I craved? When was I more colored than asylum-white and apathy-gray? I have no recollection, none at all. I am, after all, soulless.

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><p><strong>AN: This is probably obvious, but the views expressed by my characters are not necessarily my own.  
><strong>

**~Mademise Morte, September 12, 2011.  
><strong>


	7. Entry Seven

**Entry Seven: This Was Definitely Not My Fault.**

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><p>To be perfectly honest, though, it kind of was. My fault. My own most grievous fault.<p>

_Mea culpa. Mea culpa. Mea máxima culpa._

Isn't that kind of crazy, Valkyrie? I mean, you're the one who's into this whole religion thing now. Why is it that I'm the one who's praying? I bet you're not.

It's like I've gone the full circle, really. I started out Clarabelle. Kind of innocent, kind of stupid. I was a _faerie_. Trust me on this one, Valkyrie, I was far too good for you.

What the Hell happened then? Oh yeah, I remember. You happened. You broke me. I thought that I might forgive you, for a time, but I don't think I will. It's entirely possible that there's nothing to forgive, but nevertheless, I shall not relent. I'm tired of sitting back and watching everything I care about getting torn apart.

So, guess what, Valkyrie? I'm Clarabelle again. And I'm definitely not going to let you take that away from me this time.

Even though I was stupid to let you, you were the one who broke me. I don't know where the blame lies in that case, and it's probably on my side, but I'm pinning it on you.

Isn't that nice?

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><p><strong>AN: Is anyone actually reading this?**

**~Mademise Morte, September 13, 2011.  
><strong>


	8. Entry Eight

**Entry Eight: You're All At Fault, Seriously.**

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><p>I lie in bed and I stare at the ceiling. All things considered, it's not a bad ceiling to stare at. It's kind of pretty and shit. Cracked and filthy and broken like my spirit, like my heart, like my ability to write horrible, disturbing poetry. It's also gray, and I can appreciate it. I feel a lot of empathy for it, with all its morally ambiguous qualities, and oh bloody fuck I am actually feeling empathy for a patch of ceiling.<p>

Knew there was a reason why I'm in asylum.

I've been moved out of the basement. The nice male doctor who is dating you has decided that I'm pretty enough to warrant his attention, even if I have a serious attitude issue. I've got my own room now. I'm hooked up to a drip – not because I can't feed myself, not because I need to be sedated, but because if they left me with my meds in any other form I'd just take them all at once and probably die quite horribly. Which wouldn't be so great for them or something like that.

Did you know that that's the new label I've had stuck to me, as neatly as if attached with glue? I'm suicidal now. I don't see how they came to that conclusion. I think it's probably because the girls in the suicide wards are drugged up so heavy they'll remember absolutely nothing. Your boyfuck—boyfriend?—no, definitely boyfuck, hm, well, I'm sure he adores that.

How can you do it, Valkyrie? How can you live your life knowing that I can't? How do you kiss him when you know what he's been doing to me, when you know the Hell he's putting me through?

Oh yeah, I forgot that. You can live with it because you're doing exactly the same thing.

Hey, do you think suicidal girls can get visitors? Like, actual visitors? Will I be able to actually talk to you, face to face? I could steal that kiss I never got, and you could stab me with a scalpel and rape my bloody corpse. That might be nice. I'll ask the doctor about that. Maybe I'll see you soon, Valkyrie.

I'm looking forward to it already.

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><p><strong>AN: Don't you just love how it's devolving?**

**~Mademise Morte, September 13, 2011.  
><strong>


	9. Entry Nine

**Entry Nine: I Formally Absolve Thee Of All Blame. Just Kidding.**

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><p>I am tucked into the corner of my room, between the edge of the spiky cold metal of the bed frame and the plain cement of the wall. My knees are drawn up to my mouth and my thin wrists are wrapped around my ankles which are tucked as close as possible to the base of my thighs. I have made myself as small as I can, because despite everything, I am nervous about seeing you again.<p>

Do you have any idea how much I loved you, Valkyrie? You were my life, my joy, my sun. You were my everything. I hardly existed outside of your presence, and if I did, then it definitely wasn't worth it. You made life worth living for me, Valkyrie. You gave me a reason to wake up and get out from under the cocoon of covers and pretend that everything was okay, because when you were around, everything was.

I'm not quite sure how that led to this. Actually, I am, but I'm not going to go over it again, because that just makes me really sad.

You creak the door open after there is some noise outside it, with the jangling of keys on the chain that Fletcher keeps tight in his pocket unless he's around me in which case they are hung up on the stand of the IV, because he just loves to taunt me.

You walk in, looking kind of nervous and kind of drawn, but it doesn't matter, because you are _you_, and my stupid love is unconditional, and knows no bounds. What a bad girl I am, to still feel this way in this situation.

"Hello, Valkyrie." Oh my Gods, I just talked. I actually just talked. To you, no less. Oh my Gods. Oh my fucking Gods.

Sure, my voice cracked over it, sure, I wavered, sure, I just burst into tears, but the point remains. _I talked._

Your eyes are wary. "Hey," you say uncertainly. You're off balance, and even more than that, you're uncomfortable. I'm sorry about that. "Are you okay?"

"No." I manage to force this out from between sobs. Reminds me of the crazy-hair-girl. Her hair's probably grown out and been cut shorter. It's probably lost the pretty colors. "You're here, Valkyrie."

"I am. Do you mind?"

I laugh as I cry. It's a strange feeling, like hiccuping and swallowing simultaneously. "Of course I do. You're the reason I'm like this, innit?"

"Do you want me to leave?" Your hand is clenched tight, like you're prepared to hit me and run off.

"Never leave me, Valkyrie. Never again." I can't stop my tears, and I can't even see you any more. You're probably staring at me like I'm as crazy as I probably am. No, you definitely are.

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><p><strong>AN: I'm running on exhaustion. Forgive me for any typos.**

**~Mademise Morte, September 13, 2011.  
><strong>


	10. Entry Ten

**Entry Ten: Thank You.**

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><p>Eventually, I do manage to still my tears. I feel drained and empty, and maybe it's not so much a question of regaining control over myself as running out of energy. My nose is running, and my eyes burn, and my shoulders shudder, and if I actually had anything in my stomach I might have thrown up. I feel like Hell, and it's an amazing contrast to feeling like nothing at all.<p>

I blink at you, and you're smiling. It's a strange kind of smile, all bitter and sweet and angry, and my heart twists even as my head spins with confusion. Bad heart. Stupid head. Stop it. You're just making this so much more difficult. Leave us alone.

"Is that any better?" Your voice is even lovelier than I remembered, and that seems almost impossible.

"So much so." I lock my gaze upon her, forcing myself to be channeled into a single point of focus. It helps some.

A beat of silence or five skip by before you turn your face away. Am I that unnerving, love? Do you really hate me that much?

"I was just remembering our time together." There's a certain flat quality to your tone, like you're speaking from a very long way away. "You know, before?"

I do know, Valkyrie. I do know.

Before all this shit, before this nightmare started, before I started to hate you and hate myself and hate everything. When we were happy and together.

"Why would you want to do something like that?" I mimic your tonelessness as well as I can manage.

"Because it was a good time."

"And this isn't? See sense, Valkyrie. Then was then, and it's too late to mourn the passing of time. Everything's changed, and we'll never get that back." The words are too sharp, and the moment I say them, I am sorrowed by them.

"I'm stupid enough to want it anyway." She sighs. "Would it have been that bad, if I had just kept quiet when you confessed?"

My world drops away from me, and whatever is left spins. I feel faint, and I can feel my heart race. My fingertips tingle, and I think, wildly, that it must be a side affect of the accelerated heart rate. "It definitely would have been," I say, feeling like my heart's going to explode, like I'm going to die, "Because then I would really have become suicidal."

More silence, and I lean the side of my face against my knees, trying to regain control over my heart.

"What do you mean by _really_? Isn't that why you're in here?"

I giggle. "You seriously believe that? No, babe, I'm here because apparently being in love doesn't merely make me a sinner and doomed to Hell, but also crazy. It makes me a stalker, a corrupter, something that should be locked away and forgotten for the rest of eternity. It gives them a reason to torture and torment me to the edge of my capacity."

"No, but you're in the suicide ward-"

"Fletcher told you that. He'd want you to believe it. No, dear, the suicide ward is simply because he wants an actual bed upon which to assault me, instead of the floor of a cell."

She's very, very quiet. "You're lying."

"I wish."

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><p><strong>AN: I'm looking forward to the next cycle of vague plot-ness.**

**~Mademise Morte, September 16, 2011.  
><strong>


	11. Entry Eleven

**Entry Eleven: This Might Not Be All His Fault.**

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><p>"I actually hate you, did you know that? Every time my life seems like it's going to be okay, you just come along and screw it all up. I hate that about you. It is not one of your more endearing qualities. I don't understand it, really. What causes this compulsive need to ruin my life?"<p>

I haven't heard your words for quite a while. I think I tuned out about half a sentence into your rant. I'm just listening to the silk of your voice, the melody of the rise and fall of your tones. I've all but shut down. I'm staring at the thin air and my arms are wrapped tight around my ribs. My world is askew, and you're what's wrong with it. I want nothing more than for you to leave, and nothing more than for you to stay. All the same, it might be nice if you stopped talking.

I feel like I should become suicidal now, so that I can say with smile and total honesty that I really belong here, and not just because I'm a whore of very loose resolve. I don't really want to die, and I'm not too happy about the idea of more pain—I feel plenty much as it is, thank you very much—but I think I could manage it for you. Maybe I really should just kill myself. It would save us both so much heartbreak. You'd like that, wouldn't you? You'd like it if I were out of your life. I couldn't ruin it then, could I?

I guess I was lying about not paying attention. I definitely am, and guess what, Valkyrie? Each bitter little word is like a knife to my heart. For what it's worth, I never meant to hurt you. I'm not sure what I wanted, actually – I never really thought it through. I wanted to confess, and I wanted very badly for you to reciprocate, but I don't think I would have been that devastated if you didn't. I might have just been happy to continue being around you. In hindsight, confessing was stupid. I shouldn't have. Maybe then we'd still be friends and you wouldn't hate me and you wouldn't hurt like this, and I wouldn't either.

Maybe not, though. Maybe the thought of the words I couldn't say would have driven me over the edge, or maybe I would have ended up confessing eventually anyway. Maybe it was a good thing that I did – repressed feelings are not very good, I am told. Apparently I'm the kind of person who would just go batshit crazy and start attacking all my problems with knives or something. I'm not sure, but that definitely sounds like the sort of thing I'd do. It'd be an easier solution than suffering in silence, in any case.

Are there any knives in here? I could stab you now. It could be quick.

"Are you even listening any more? Are my words making any impact? Or are you just a dead little doll?" Your voice is angry. It's scaring me.

"I'm listening. Can't pretend to like what I'm hearing, but I'm definitely listening. Hey, if repeatedly fucking up the life of the person I love is one of my less endearing qualities, does that mean that you think that I actually have any? Endearing qualities, that is. Because I'm trying to see the world from your eyes, and I have been thoroughly demonized in it. Do you even think of me as human any longer? Obviously not – you would never treat a human being like this."

I fall silent, but I keep smiling at you. It wouldn't do to let you forget that I am ever your willing slave, no matter how much you do to me, no matter how much hate I get in return for your love.

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><p><strong>AN: I'm reading Death Bringer now, and interestingly enough, even reading it, I can't really think of anything I'd change about this story to make it truer to the canon.**

**~Mademise Morte, September 19, 2011.  
><strong>


	12. Entry Twelve

**Entry Twelve: Whoever Is At Fault, It Is Not Important.**

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><p>A preternatural calm has settled over me, and I am smiling politely at Fletcher Renn, the doctor who has seen fit to make my life into an outpost of Hell itself, or so I should like to believe. Of course, I know on a rational level that everything I have seen, or thought I have seen, during my sojourn into Asylum is a dream caused by my mania and their drugs, but I don't believe it. That kind of vividity never lies, and even if it does, it isn't this time. I'm certain of it. Definitely certain.<p>

"So I am free to go?"

"Of course you are, Clarabelle. I'll be looking forward to… _Seeing _you again, but in a different capacity, of course." He says this with a lecherous leer.

Holy fuck, he is crazy.

"Thank you then, _doctor._" I simper, and then I leave.

I listen to the way my shoes make a sound against the floor. It's been ages since I wore shoes. I forgot the feeling. They hurt. I'll probably have blisters. Nevertheless, they're a comfort. They tell me that I'm real, that I'm not delirious, that I'm not a mere dream. They're comfortably solid.

I walk by a gaggle of nurses. They are not giggling or chattering, but they're not as inhuman as my memories said. They look serious, but not demonic. They are simply human.

Maybe I really was dreaming, all that time. These don't look like the instruments of torture I don't remember.

I'm almost out of the building. Soon I'll see sunlight. That sounds so strange. So wrong. Sunlight. There's such a thing as a sun. It's bright and it's warm and it's lovely. I'll see it soon. I'll feel it. There's a place that's not Asylum. There are people there. There are faeries.

I laugh softly to myself, and the sound is beautiful. I start to run, to skip, to dance, and I truly feel complete, as I haven't in all this time.

With a trip, I stop, and I stare, and I can't breathe. I am in the area of the Containment cells, blocked off from the outside world by thick panels of glass. Exactly like a dizzy, dazed, half-recalled dream, I am assaulted with memory.

The bandages. The gags. Fletcher.

I start running again, but now it is a course perpendicular to what I had tread previously. I run and I run and I run, past containment cell after containment cell, until I reach the one just past where I had been. I stop, and I stare at the girl therein contained. I had thought that she might be there still, even after all this time, and indeed she is. Her hair is still colorful – just the tips, but the color remains. Her eyes are hollow now, though, and it doesn't look like she ever stopped crying. I thought she had, because I couldn't hear it, but that was a stupid assumption. If a tree falls with no-one to hear it, it still makes a sound.

She is bound and she is gagged and she is being raped by a black-haired man in a doctor's coat.

I stand there and I stare and I don't know how long it is until I realize that I need to leave before he sees me, before I get locked back into this place. Once I have made this connection, though, I am off, after one last lingering glance backwards. Her name is Zephyr, I discover. They don't list a last name, but then, why would they want legal identification of their inmates?

I am soon out of the wretched building, and the sun blinds me. It is glorious, but I can hardly register it, because once again I am running, and my muscles are screaming bloody murder, and I cannot stop. I find my way home, mindlessly getting my keys out of the bag they had very kindly returned to me, wrench the door open and rush inside. I know my house by heart, and so it takes hardly an instant and nary a thought for me to locate my bathroom. I retch my guts out.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: I considered making bright-haired-girl Guild's daughter, because obviously I love torturing her, but Zephyr won out by dint of actually having a name.**

**~Mademise Morte, October 1, 2011.  
><strong>


	13. Entry Thirteen

**Entry Thirteen: **_**THIS. **_**Not My Fucking Fault.**

* * *

><p>I am sweating and shaking. I feel cold and far too warm at once, I can't stop my hands from shuddering, and I would very much like to throw up, only I can't, because I have nothing left to expel. I feel empty and I feel hollow and I feel like I am going to die.<p>

This has been happening a lot lately. I think it might be because of leaving the Asylum or something. Maybe I'm allergic to the air out here? I'm surely not pregnant, that much I know – I went out and bought a test kit. When that came up negative, I waited two weeks and got another. That one was negative too, though it succeeded in making me feel incredibly paranoid. I also got an STD kit, just for fun. Apparently the doctors in the asylum were cleaner than you'd expect.

I rinse out my mouth with cold water, and I wash my hands and face. My hair's grown out a bit, so it's tied up, conveniently out of the way. I hate it when vomit gets stuck to it and I can't get rid of the _smell_…

I smooth my slip down. It's white and cotton and its redeeming factor is that it's easy to wash. I feel the way my hips protrude, and I sigh. I can feel the lower pairs of my ribs quite clearly, just like the way that my abdominal area seems almost flat. Thank God, I'm not skeletal yet.

I leave the bathroom, still trembling. The floor is cold beneath my bare feet, and my teeth ache so, so much.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: That's probably what I hate most about throwing up several times in succession - the resultant toothache.**

**~Mademise Morte, October 2, 2011.  
><strong>


	14. Entry Fourteen

**Entry Fourteen: Apathy.  
><strong>

* * *

><p>"Clarabelle?" Your voice is soft, edging on the incredulous. I wish I could just tell you to keep quiet and stay away, but I'm not really all that capable of speech at the moment. Nothing personal, you understand, but at this instant in time I'd rather just stare at you distantly than fall to pieces. "Is that you?"<p>

"Yes." I find my tongue, and now I am smiling at you. I don't think it's a very good smile, but it's a smile all the same. That counts for something, right? "Who else would it be?"

"You look terrible." You're hanging off your boyfriend's arm. He's speaking now, and I hate the sound of his voice. Not to be judgmental or anything, but it doesn't bring up very good memories. It makes me feel like the ground is falling away from me, like I'm going to fall into the cracks of the earth, like I'm nothing.

"Thank you so much for saying so, Fletcher." My voice sounds brittle to my own ears, like it's going to crack unto a hundred little pieces. "That really means so much to me." I turn the full force of my smile onto him, and from his reaction, it is definitely not a good smile at all. He always did think that I used my teeth too much…

"You really should go to a doctor, Clarabelle. You don't look well." Your eyes are concerned, and that's kind of sweet, even if your words really aren't. You seriously think I'm ever going to set foot in a hospital again?

"I thank you for taking an interest." There. That should shut you up.

We just stand around for a while, speaking. He says something stupid, I snap back as bitterly as I can manage, and you desperately try to mediate. Eventually, we part ways, Fletcher and I casting each other poisonous looks. I get my shopping finished, and I note the way that my hands are shaking. I return home, and I put everything away, and I collapse.

Curled into a little ball and shaking and sobbing, I wonder how my life has actually changed since I left that place. Not a whole lot, probably.

Eventually, I manage to draw myself up, and I stare at myself in the mirror.

_You look terrible._ I wish that his words didn't hurt me like that. Wouldn't you say that I've suffered enough at his hands? Why should it continue, even now?

I stare at my reflection, and I will myself to see that he's stupid, that he's wrong. I can't. I don't look how I remember I did before. My outline looks almost blurry, like I'm a ghost. Light shines through me, and everything becomes distant and vague.

Oh, wait. That's because of the tears.

Even with my eyes clear, I can't see any kind of defiance. I look weak and I look soft and I look far too human for my liking. My face is distorted, twisted, with pain and with misery.

I'll prove him wrong, Valkyrie, I swear to it. I'll build my life again. I'll become stronger.

It's a beautiful thought, and yet it seems impossible. Unattainable. My stomach lurches quite unpleasantly, and even though I know that there is nothing for me to regurgitate, I cannot stop myself from running to the sink. It's a reflex, and yet, as I hunch and shudder, I still haven't let go of the hope.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Things are looking up, ne?**

**~Mademise Morte, October 22, 2011.  
><strong>


	15. Entry Fifteen

**Entry Fifteen: Alone Against the World.  
><strong>

* * *

><p>I stare at my mirror reflection. I look hollow, somehow, even after all this time. I've been free and clean of self-doubt and self-harm this past forever, assuming three hours is your idea of forever, which it definitely is for me. I have bathed and eaten and am dressing now to go out to the park, to stare up at the sky and to breathe the free air. I have missed that, I think.<p>

My collarbones are too prominent. This is the first thing I notice about myself, and it worries me a great deal. I have something of a clavicle fetish, and it takes quite a bit for me to actually dislike looking at them, to make me feel revolted and frightened. They look truly horrible, though, like they're just so much frame for thin, thin skin to drape off.

My hair is dull. It has been growing out again, but it feels like straw. It's not nice. It's starting to fall out, too. I need to trim it, then get some kind of treatment for it, and hopefully eat enough of a balanced diet and be able to keep the food down long enough for me to get the nutrients I should have.

It's distressing how loose my clothing is on me. The most figure-hugging of my old skirts, the most flatteringly tight of my tops, hang off me. I look like a scarecrow, and it isn't nice at all.

It's kind of strange, but I think I'd probably be in better shape if I really had gotten knocked up during my stay in the hospital. I'd be able to tell myself that I had a valid reason for being so fucked up, instead of just being weak and dull and spineless and ugly.

The radio is humming brightly, treating me to some perfectly happy music, because that is all I ever listen to, because hearing other people angst really makes me happy. It makes me feel like, as bad as I have it, at least I've never felt the need to immortalize my feelings in song. At least I'm not _that_ crazy. I hum cheerily as I lace up my boots. I think I'll go shopping for some new clothes after my walk. That should be nice. Binge on shopping as opposed to pain, though it will probably hurt my wallet quite a bit. Whatever. I deserve something, and it's not like Kenspeckle never paid me well, as useless a lab assistant as I was. I'll run out of money in a few months, though, and then I'll have to go looking for a job, start seeking subservience for pay.

I walk out without my coat on. It's freezingly, bitingly cold, but the sleeves that cover my arms are warm enough that I don't rush back inside immediately. I breathe in slowly, relishing the feeling of being filled by my surroundings, the feeling that I am returning at last to Mother Earth, the feeling that I am finally real. It's gorgeous, and my soul aches with longing. I want to sink into the ground and become one with the dirt, and I never want to move again. I want to become stone, become ice, become a part of the whistling wind.

The moment lasts for an eternity, and when I am cast back into the world I have inhabited for such a pathetically long time, it's not a nice feeling. It's like I have lost something truly beautiful, and for one more moment, one more dizzying second, I want nothing more than to get back that feeling of peace, of complete acquiescence, of utter tranquility. I then return to my house to get my coat, ignoring the stares of passers-by and sucking my stomach in as far as I can.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: I think it's quite fortuitous that Clarabelle isn't an elemental in this story, or she'd have long turned herself to stone...**

**~Mademise Morte, November 13, 2011.  
><strong>


	16. Entry Sixteen

**Entry Sixteen: Pretense of Sanity.  
><strong>

* * *

><p>With my coat on, warm and loose and far too large, with the sleeves stretching out to cover my hands and the hem trailing down to brush against my boot-tops, the night air isn't nearly as frigid, as foreign, as it was before. The feeling of it against my exposed face, sweeping at my eyes and my lips, is as sweet as ever, though.<p>

The steps I take are laborious, careful. My feet are not the steadiest, and the street isn't the most even. I remember when I could run down this road, laughing and happier than I believed possible, happier than I think I could possibly ever be again. It's a little bit saddening to walk down now, sedate and demure, feeling hollow and feeling empty and hating myself for not running, for not flying. I feel like I've been chained to the ground. Definitely not a good feeling.

My boots are heavier than I thought they were, and it's a struggle to not shuffle, to not trip over them. They were fine before, I remember quite distinctly. I've become so weak, I can barely imagine it.

I reach the area of grass and trees, and I smile a little. I can't help it. Seeing the green and the brown and the ice and the beauty is heartache, is torture, but the most exquisite, loveliest torture possible, the sweetest, most awfully, cruelly wondrous heartache. Blood burning warm, I reach out to caress the bark of a gorgeous oak. The touch is fleeting, but the feelings thus gained are beyond amazing.

I force myself away after a while, and I turn, taking in the small part of heaven that I suddenly feel that this must be, and then I stop, because I know that I have gone completely mad, become absolutely unhinged and definitely belong in a hospital this time around, because I could swear that I see you, Valkyrie.

You are on a bench, leaning back with your eyes closed and your face tilted skywards. Your hands are by your sides, as if keeping you upright, as if you're preparing to spring off into the distance, only not. Seeing you like this, totally vulnerable, totally at ease, is sort of strange. Maybe it's because I wasn't expecting it, or maybe it's because you're lovelier than I ever dared remember. Whatever it is, I am truly entranced, spellbound, by the sight of you.

"I thought you'd be here." Your words are clumsy, as if you're unused to speech, like you've rehearsed them so many times in your mind that they've ceased to hold any sort of meaning for you. Your lips are cherry red, and your eyes are still closed.

"You always did know me too well, didn't you?" Despite my efforts at keeping the bitterness out of my tone, a little poison spikes its way in.

You wince. "Sorry."

"What is there to apologize for, Valkyrie? What have you done now?"

"I broke up with him. Fletcher."

"Shouldn't he be the one you're apologizing to, then?"

"Not at all. I wanted to beg your forgiveness."

"For?"

"Everything."

I can't stop myself. I laugh. "That's a good start, I suppose, but what do you expect to happen after that? After you've said your empty words and forced me to tell you something I never, ever meant, what do you want? You've already destroyed me once, do you really want to repeat the process? Accept, lovely, the consequences of your actions. I'm mad now, and I never did think we could be mere friends."

"I want to try it. Being with you. I never gave it that much thought when you told me you'd like to be more, at first. I just panicked. Never really gave you a chance. So I want to start again."

I don't answer, and you pout. It's way cuter than I want to give you credit for.

"Hi. My name's Valkyrie Cain, and I would be honored if you would join me for ice-cream this evening. My treat."

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Should I be warning you that this really won't end as cheerfully as it may seem it will? Because it won't. Trust me, it won't.  
><strong>

**~Mademise Morte, November 14, 2011.  
><strong>


	17. Entry Seventeen

**Entry Seventeen: Invocation to Rage.  
><strong>

* * *

><p>"You're joking, right?" My tone is dull, flat. "You think you can just waltz back into my life and make it all right again with empty, empty words? You think I could ever trust you again after this? I still love you, that's true, but you've also made me hate you. If I sliced away an inch of your skin for every time the only thing I wanted in this world was to kill you, I'd run out of skin. For every time I've cursed your name, aloud or in my mind, in that hospital or outside of it, I could make you hurt, and you would die a thousand times over. For every lie you've told, I could shave off a second of your life, and you'd be dead years ago. Valkyrie, <em>you killed me<em>. You took everything that was good about me—don't you dare deny it, you know you did—and you annihilated it. You made me suffer so much, and I will never be able to forget it." I breathe slowly. "I was a faerie, and you cut off my wings."

"What do you mean?" you ask, and even though your words are syrupy and soothing as ever, there is panic in your eyes, and your mask is cracking into a thousand pieces. You know exactly what I mean, and so I remain silent for a moment, relishing the look of complete and utter horror on your face, reveling in the fact that I'm finally the tormentor, and you are helpless.

"You really don't need me to answer, Valkyrie," I say, and then I begin to laugh. It starts off high, keening, vibrating at the back of my head and making me dizzy, breathless, but as I become less tense, it settles to my normal register. "I'm stupid, though, so I will anyway.

"Look all you want." I open the front of my coat, and you gape. You know exactly what I mean now too. Your eyes flicker, and I know that you're panicking, because you can count my bones, can see the skeleton that you've turned me into. "Guess what? I haven't bled once since I left the hospital. Apparently that happens when you don't eat enough, or you can't hold anything down long enough for it to count, because you feel ugly and fat and useless and dead. These clothes used to be tight. I was going to throw them away, because I thought that there was no way I could ever wear them again. Sometimes I can't breathe, sometimes because I haven't the strength or something, but mostly because I feel like I'm back there again. I feel like I am trapped, like I am hunted, like I am hated and something ugly, an aberration, an abomination. I feel like I am useless, like I am inhuman, and like I am going to die. Sometimes I feel like I really am dead, just walking around. You're talking to a muscle spasm now, Valkyrie. That's all I am. I'm a ghost inhabiting an empty husk. I'm something that shouldn't exist.

"My mind is going now too. You took away any chance I had at a healthy body and you killed my emotions, so here goes the last part of what made me me. I have all the memories, but the ones from before the hospitalization are so faraway and so meaningless that they might not even be mine. They're someone else's. They belong to the faerie girl you murdered. The ones from the hospitalization are blurry, and so many people have told me that they don't exist that I'm starting to believe them, or else they are so, so real, and I live them over and over again until they cease to have any meaning to me except that I've never moved on. Sometimes I wake up and I want to _scream_, Valkyrie, but I can't, because they've gagged me and tied me up, and it takes hours for me to move again. Nothing that's happened since the hospitalization has really stuck, because I'm still there, and I can't move on, and my spirit just can't recognize the body it's meant to be in, because it no longer exists. A lot of the time, I feel like I'm just watching myself from somewhere far, far away, only not, because I can't feel anything any more.

"_Are you fucking listening_?"

I'm breathing hard and my heart is beating too fast. My world lurches and I keep my eyes on you, on your face, so distorted with hate and rage and fear, and so it is that I collapse, finally sinking into the oblivion that I so deeply crave.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: That just felt way too cathartic. I worry myself sometimes.**

**~Mademise Morte, November 29, 2011.  
><strong>


	18. Entry Eighteen

**Entry Eighteen: All My Fault.**

* * *

><p>I breathe in slowly, trying to regain sense of myself. It is difficult. My body feels distant, a completely separate entity, and, perhaps more worryingly, I get the feel of two separate flesh forms in addition to the shape of the spirit that I am. I can vaguely feel the outline of a woman propped against a wall, head inclined and legs stretched out, just as I register the form of a girl tucked in the fetal position. It is discomfiting, especially as I cannot tell which is real.<p>

I close my eyes for a moment, and what little of the glow that marks the interior of my mind there is fades and dulls, curling and dancing away from me. I imagine that I have just cut myself away from the body that is not truly mine, and suddenly I feel lighter, less constrained. I then open my eyes, and I have returned to the lightness, but with the radiance comes the feeling of being coupled.

I open my eyes again, and I find myself in a white room.

My arms are folded against my chest, as if I am a corpse, an Egyptian mummy in my straightjacket and my bandages. Blood stains its way down from my shoulders and my waist to my legs, which are as bound as the rest of me. I try to scream, need desperately to shout, but I cannot. My mouth is constrained by a gag.

I want to move. I want to thrash about, to gain mobility in some small way. I want to yell, to weep, to cry, but I find myself as unmoving as a statue. I try to close my eyes, to yank myself away from this flesh, but I cannot. I am trapped.

You walk into the room, and I know that this is a dream, because you are truly ugly in my eyes in a way that I have never been able to see you before, because you finally look like the demon you have acted to me, in the past forever. It gives me a certain degree of satisfaction, to look upon your twisted features and to see in you a person that I can actually hate. Hate is a bitter thing, a seeping, horrible poison, and somehow I can move again. I draw myself up, limbs pulsing with energy and heart racing with a horrible kind of a thirst, a lust unlike anything I have felt for you before. I reach out a hand to you, skin hanging off bone and nails long and filthy, and as I claw at you, as you beg for me to stop, I realize that I am unclothed, and little more than a skeleton. I laugh as I make you bleed, and I do not stop until you are long dead. It is as I look down on your corpse with a deep satisfaction that the true nightmare begins.

You are covered in scratches and festering wounds now, and there is no way that you are alive, and yet you continue to bleed, your mouth twitching, to whisper words. On the floor beneath you, crushed under your body, is a pair of wings, thin and gauzy, once elegant and now torn.

_I was a faerie, Clarabelle. You cut off my wings._

With a rising horror, I grab your hands and your feet, sliding my fingers over your ravished chest. Burning little incisions that I could never have created rest on your corpse – five of them. The stigmata.

I am hit by revulsion, and devolve even farther from what I have become. In my misery and grief and revulsion and fear, I am primal, helpless. When I am so sick that I cannot any longer bear the pain, everything just slips away from me, and all I am left with is a spinning head and a bleeding heart.

* * *

><p>After a few moments of blessed peace in that state just between unconsciousness and waking, I am jolted by the sheer force of the recollection. <em>I murdered Valkyrie<em>. In a rush of panic, I shove my eyes open and look around for your corpse. I see none. Slowly, scared, I look at myself. I am in a hospital bed once more, but it is unfamiliar. I am hooked up to an intravenous drip, and much more than mere bone. My fingernails are clipped, and not the least bit bloody. The smell of rotting flesh is gone.

It was a dream, I realize. A horrible, horrible dream. I can still fix things. I can avoid hurting the woman I love in the same way she hurt me. I can mend my life, and make everything better, because I am finally at peace with myself. I am sane, sane, wonderfully sane.

I stand, careful not to let my blood backflow into the IV, and I go to the mirror placed upon the wall. I smile at my reflection, letting all the happiness and the strength I am feeling flood my expression.

"I was sick, but I'm better now, and I can make everything better. Life is good, and I have nothing to fear any more." Even my voice sounds so much stronger.

My reflection's face turns to a snarling smirk, and my blood runs cold as she answers me, her voice harsh. "Are you really sure about that?" she asks me.

I cannot even scream.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: And on that note, this story is finished.**

** I devote this whole thing to blackbloodbaby, who has just been fabulously supportive throughout. I hope that the finale lives up the the rest of it.**

**~Mademise Morte, December 10, 2011.  
><strong>


End file.
